The Month That Changes Everything: Treat Your Business Like a 9-to-5

GGGR Episode 290 – Final

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
hours, put, desk, asana, accountable, work, linkedin, love, day, paycheck, long, hustle, house,
productivity, commute, mindful, showered, podcast, month, business
00:00
Karen,
00:10
hello, hello, and welcome to the good girls get rich podcast. I’m your host, Karen yankovich, and this
week we’re talking about a topic that I talk a lot about to my clients, many of the women in our
seasoned up program, and I have this conversation a lot, and I wanted to bring it to you, because it is
something that I think we need to reframe a little bit in our head. And that is, what if we treated our
business the way we showed up for our last job? So what if we showed up for ourselves the way we
showed up for our last job? So you know, what do I mean by that? My the last paycheck job I got
when I before I had before I went full time into my business, was a long commute. In fact, the
commute was so long and I live in northern New Jersey, and I was commuting right to buy the Lincoln
Tunnel. So you can just imagine how the commute was. I actually changed my hours so that I had to
be there at 7am because if I left my house at six. I got there in 45 minutes. I had, normally had to be
there by eight. I left my house at seven. I didn’t get there till 738, o’clock, like it took forever. So the
commute was long while I was there, obviously there was things I needed to do, things I need people
needed to show up for. I had to be organized. I had to make sure. I had to have a lunch plan, right? I
had to have, you know, a plan for what was going on in my house, you know? And I think about that
sometimes, because as I run my business, right, I am human, just like you are, and I have days that I
procrastinate, right? Or maybe I’ll get a little whiny about how much work I’m putting into something,
and then I’m like, You know what, compared to what I used to do? This is not anywhere near as Mount
amount of work. And it seems like it is, because I’m at my desk a whole lot, but, and because I’m an
entrepreneur, right? Sometimes I’m at my desk. I’m recording this at some Saturday afternoon. You
know, I can do that. I have nothing going on. Nobody’s in the house. It’s quiet, nobody’s going along.
So it’s a good time for me to do this. So I get to do that, even though I, I am, you know, so I don’t
have a regular nine to five, is what I’m saying. So, but I want to talk about this a little bit, because if
you’re struggling, if you’re having, if 2024, isn’t the year you hoped it would be, and you’re thinking
about, you know, maybe there’s, maybe you need to make some new, some new decisions around
how you’re bringing money into your life and your business. First of all, I want to help you with that.
Please book a call on my calendar so we can chat about that. There’s the link is in the show notes,
and no judgment if what you want to do is go and get a paycheck drop. But before you do that, I want
you to listen to this whole episode, because what if just for one month we treated our own business
with the same structure and effort we used to give our I’ll call it a nine to five job. Like, think about
that. Think about that. I’m not suggesting you work more hours forever, right? I mean, that’s the goal
of I love being able to be flexible. I love being able to say yes, when something is going on on a
Wednesday that I want to be a part of, right, that I couldn’t before. I’m not suggesting you should do
this forever, but I’m saying, what if, just for a month, you were more intentional with your effort and
your choices around how you’re spending your time, right? So if, in the past, maybe you set your
alarm, like for me to be at my desk at 7am to leave my house at 6am I was setting my alarm for like,
4:30am which means I was in bed by like, 738 o’clock, you know, because I needed to be and, I mean,
listen, those of you that know me know like, that’s not unusual for me. Anyway, I like to be up early in
the mornings, but I had to be up and out of my house, right? So what if I did that? What if I left my
house by what if I by 6am I was, I can’t even say this with a straight face. I was up and showered and
sitting at my desk right, just like I would have been in my car headed to work, I would have been
showered. I would have my coffee and my little, you know, my little Yeti, I would have had my lunch
bed packed down the seat next to me, right? What if I did that? What if I sat at my desk at 6am and I
took an hour break for lunch, maybe a break here and there, whatever, and then stayed at my desk.
Now, remember, I worked seven to three, so I probably got home about four, so I stayed at my desk
till about I stayed at my desk till like four. What if I did that for a month? What would change in my
business? What if you did that for a month? What would change in your business? Right? So I want to
talk a little bit about the mental shift we need to make when we move from employee to
entrepreneur. You know, when we are an employee, we’re conditioned to be accountable to our boss,
right? Accountable to our employer, accountable to our coworkers, accountable to the people around
us, and that affects our mindset when we become our own boss, because we’re no longer
accountable to anybody right now, that’s not fully true, right? I’m accountable to my team. They’re
awfully happy I’m recording this right now, right? Because it was, you know, I’m a little behind on
getting these episodes out, so I’m accountable to the people that work for me. And, you know,
accountability, there are studies that show how work, place, expectations drive productivity, right? So
you’re there. You.
05:00
Know that there’s expectations of you when you’re at your you know working at your paycheck job,
you know that there’s certain production that has to happen. People expect things from you by
certain dates. They expect reports or whatever me sitting in meetings, whatever you You did, right?
Those expectations drove your productivity, right? So I want you to think a little bit about that shift.
How can you for the next month, right? For the next month shift that and this, I think, is going live,
really, maybe the beginning of October. So let’s say for october 2024, or the next month. Whenever
you’re listening to this shift, your mindset a little bit to the same, maybe even put notes on your
computer if you need to right, have the same accountability and expectations that you had when you
had a paycheck job. Okay, so, you know, here’s the deal I love. I absolutely adore the freedom of
entrepreneurship. But can I give that up for a month? I can, I can, because I know it’s coming back.
And listen, even when you worked a full time job, you still had days off, right? So you can still take a
day off if you want, on a Wednesday and go to a Broadway show or, you know, hang out with your
kids, or go to a back school night, or go trick or treating with your kids, right? So you can still do those
kinds of things, but we can’t let the freedom of entrepreneurship lead to less discipline, because then
we’re sabotaging our own success, right? Like, what that heck? What are we doing, right? So, you
know, maybe you need to build some structure, and maybe you need to build some structure. And
I’ve got, you know, I’ve got some structure built into how I want to spend my days. I know. I’ve got,
you know, and let me tell you something, it’s ever evolving. It’s ever evolving. But for me, that
structure allows me to be more productive, and the more productive I am when I’m sitting at this
desk, the more time I have to hang out with my kids and my grandkids and my friends and go to
Broadway shows, right?
06:53
Instead, you know, because of because there’s not as much structure in my day, there’s nobody
expecting me to be sitting here, right? Um, what
07:02
happens? Then, sometimes these things don’t get done on time, and then I spend the whole day
being not productive, but with the stress of I didn’t get this done, I didn’t get that podcast recorded,
whatever that is, right? So structure can help that productivity. And you know, I get that. You know,
us entrepreneurs often wear multiple hats, right? We’re the CEO, we run the marketing department. Maybe we’re the financial planner. Maybe we even do tests. And you know, my goal for you is for you
to be making enough money so you can pay people to do all those things so that you can stay in your
zone of genius. That is fundamentally what we do around here. And she’s linked up, right? Um, but I
know, but you know, even, even I, I’m not, you know, there’s certainly more roles for me than just one
role an entrepreneur, right? I have other roles that I still play in this business, and I have people that
help me with some of those roles, right? But I want to just acknowledge that this is not as easy,
frankly, as it was when you had a paycheck, right? Because you need to, you need to be conscious of
it, and you need to bring it, bring that energy to the work you’re doing. So let’s talk about what that
nine to five framework could do to your business, right? So what would happen if you put in that
structured effort, like thinking about that, thinking about, again, I can almost not even say this with a
straight face, because I can’t even tell you the last time that’s happened that I’ve been sitting at my
desk at 6am showered and camera ready. You know what I mean? Like, I just rarely happens. But can
I do it for the month of October? I could, right? I did it for years, many, many, many years. I did this,
right? So, you know, make your coffee, have your breakfast, build it in. Do like, plan your month out
as if you were going to the office, and then come sit at your desk, okay, then come sit at your desk.
And, you know, we know that this works. We know that this works if you start to think about, you
know, if you start to think about how much time you spend, I’m, you know, I’ll call it procrastinating.
But there’s a lot of other things that we’re doing, thinking that we’re doing work, right? But if, even if
you just built in that commute time to your desk, I think a lot of things would change, right? You
know, obviously, this podcast is, well, not obviously, maybe you’re listening to it, you know, the audio.
But we also have a video version of this. If you go to YouTube, you’ll see there’s a playlist for our good
girls get rich episodes, which means I have to be camera ready, right? It would be great. It would be
great if I was sitting at my every time I was sitting at my desk I was camera ready, right? Like, it
would be amazing. It doesn’t happen all that often. I’m like, Okay, I gotta run down soon take a
shower, or I don’t go to my desk yet because I haven’t taken a shower yet, or brush my hair or put on
makeup or whatever, right? You know. And so I’m saying this to you, and saying that, you know, these
are things that I certainly could implement as well. And I’m not saying we need to do this forever, and
I’m not saying we have to do this always, but do it for the next month. For the next month, it isn’t
about the extra time, even though we’re going to be putting the extra time in. It’s more about the
focus, right? It’s more about the focus time versus scatter time, right? Cal Newport wrote the book.
10:00
Deep Work, which is talks a lot about that focus time versus scatter time. You definitely want to check
that out. I actually also love the Pomodoro Technique, time blocking I often put on, you know, use my
phone and I’ll, and I’ll put, or I have an Alexa here, and I’ll just ask for it to give me, you know, a 30
minute timer, and then I know for 30 minutes I’m going to be focused, right? And I can’t do anything
else. And that’s one of the way. It’s one of the tricks that I have. We have these tools are really easy
to use. I have, you know, I have both an Alexa and my phone and an iPad. I got all the things here,
right? I got all the things here. I don’t need to have a physical timer here. I can. I can do this a couple
times throughout the day, and it’s amazing how much more work I get done when I do that. If I’m
having a day where I’m feeling behind, I’ll actually, like, plan, like, like, maybe four hours straight.
And when I say four hours straight, I build in break time, because I will never sit at my desk for four
hours straight, because I just know that doesn’t serve me or you, but I might do half hour and then a
10 minute break, and then, like, a half hour of emails, and then 10 minute break, half hour of
outlining a podcast, and then a 10 minute break, half hour of checking in with my community, and
then 10 minute break. And like, I literally just block out four straight hours just to catch up the busy
work that’s been sitting on my desk and weighing on my mind for, you know, however long, right? I,
you know, I remember when I first learned this technique.
11:24
It was kind of silly and crazy how eye opening it was for me. But I remember like I would I was doing
because I sometimes you just gotta trick yourself, right? And that’s what I do. I use I’m a fan of index
cards. I probably told you that before I was have a stack of index cards with me, and I’ll just write
down half hour email, half hour this. And there was a couple things in my house that needed to get
done. And there was, like, I have this bench in my bedroom, and there was just a pile of crap on the
bench. And I really am not a crap person. I don’t have a lot of stuff in my house, but there was just a
pile there that I just have kept ignoring for a month, you know, not for a couple days, like, for a
month. And I was like, All right, half hour, I’m gonna clean that pile of crap. It took me five minutes.
Took me five minutes, but when I put that focus on it right, it came to throw off my brain. It was done
forever, and I wasn’t stressing about it for an entire month. Every time I walk by that, I gotta get to
that pile, right? Think about that for your business. Think about that for your business. If you put
some focus time on some of the things you know, there’s also the, you know, eat the frog, right? Like,
do the do the things that you that have been weighing on? You just get rid of them, right? Get rid of
them. Maybe start your day with an intention, just kind of like you would if you showed up for a job,
like, maybe it’s not to get coffee. Maybe you check in with your team, you know, whatever it looked
like for you, right? And then put in a couple of dedicated work blocks. Again, this is just for a couple of
weeks, right? Make sure you build in breaks and lunch. I am a huge, a huge fan of that. If you haven’t
listened yet to my podcast with candy Barone or she talked about projectors and human design, my
human design says I need a lot of breaks, so I take a lot of breaks, and it such. It makes such a big
difference in my productivity. And then maybe have an end of day routine. Maybe, instead of, like,
sliding into your desk and then sliding out of your desk at, you know, at the end of the day, maybe
you say, all right, before I leave my desk, I want to just check. I need. I’m going to do these four
things. And maybe it’s like, go through the papers on your desk to make sure and know whose end
that you that you left. Maybe it’s shutting your computer down. Maybe it’s not shutting your computer
down, right? Maybe it’s whatever it is, but maybe, and I’m you know, it doesn’t have to be long and
extensive, and there’s no punishment if you don’t do it. But the more you can organize your struct,
the structure of all of this, the more you’re going to get done, and the more peaceful it’s going to be,
and the more profitable you’re going to be. So I can say all these things, but maybe you’re still
thinking, Yeah, but you talked earlier, Karen about how you need to be accountable. And being in a
workplace has built in accountability, so you need to figure in, built in accountability, right? Maybe
you have a mastermind buddy. Maybe you can, like, I just set a timer. Maybe you can, you know,
whatever check in with, you know, have daily check ins with somebody. Maybe you can even have
somebody, you know, your VA, or somebody on your team, check in with you, right, and say, I, you
know, I have this done, like, for example, one of the things for me is, we use Asana. I don’t really if it’s
something that has to be done on a specific day in a specific time. It’s on my calendar. It’s not just in
Asana. But, of course, the things in Asana have due dates as well. But if it’s a due dated Asana, it’s
kind of like a roundabout this day, this needs to get done, right? Um, well, I had to stop doing that. I
had to stop doing that because I am the leader of the team, right? And my Asana tasks were all late. What reason does anybody else have to be on time with their Asana tasks, right? So that’s the built in
accountability I have. I put it in Asana, I put a date on it, and at the end of the end of the day, I’ll look
at it. Now, it doesn’t mean I don’t move things, right? Like, maybe at the end of the day I’m like,
Alright, there’s six things I didn’t get to it, Asana. Is there anything that really need to get done
today? No, I can move them to tomorrow, right? So again, this is not kind of this is make it work for
you, but, but make it you know, may understand that it can be flexible, that it can.
15:00
Flexible, because you have to have realistic expectations, right? You have to have real, realistic
expectations. Your goal isn’t for you to work 10 hour days, right, but I want you to ensure that the
hours you do work are intentional and productive, kind of like they were when you were somebody
was looking over your shoulder and you know, you got your paycheck if you got your job done, right,
and if you even put half of that effort. I’m not kidding. You. Want to tell you, I talk to people about this
a lot, and most people will cop to the fact that they probably don’t put half the amount of hours. I
mean, we feel like we do because we’re at our desk a lot, but we might not put half the amount of
hours into the work we’re doing as an entrepreneur that we maybe did as a as a employee. Again, I’m
not talking about the hours you’re sitting at your desk. I’m talking about the productive hours and the
output, not just I gotta get this done. I gotta get this done. I gotta get this done, right? So, alright, so
the thing here is, too I want you to be mindful about this. I want you to be mindful about this. I want
you to be this. Is, I’m not at all projecting the hustle culture. You know, I often joke that Gary
Vaynerchuk and I are both from New Jersey, but I’m lean anti Gary Vaynerchuk when it comes to
hustle, I don’t think the hustle culture is something that we need to do, but I do think, and I shouldn’t
say that, I think there’s times you need to hustle, right? There are times you need to hustle. There’s
times we all need to hustle. We can’t. I have no interest in hustling all day long every day. And I have
no interest in in, you know, my students and my clients having that, having to hustle all day long
every day. That’s why we’ve created a system with our she’s linked up LinkedIn and PR strategy
system that’s only a couple hours a week, because I know if I gave my clients 10 hours a week that I
needed from them, they’d never do it. But if they do these couple of things every week. It’s going to
bring calls on their calendar. Leads to them, right? So, so that’s so it’s not the hustle, it’s the mindful
effort, okay? It’s the consistent effort. Long hours does not necessarily equate success. And by the
way, you know, if you’re as old as me, you may have maybe old enough to remember when
multitasking was was something that we were all wanted to do and, oh, I’m a great multitasker, right?
We now know that multitasking sucks. It’s terrible for our our productivity, right? So we want to use
tools again, like I’ll use a sauna if I’m tempted to do something and multitask, I’ll go into a sun. I’ll
drop it in. I’ll put a due date for tomorrow, and get it out of my brain. Of my brain. But I haven’t
forgotten about it, right? So it keeps me on task with what I’m currently doing. So I can be mindful
about what I’m doing. I can make, I can be be mindful that that I make sure that I’m prioritizing the
money making tasks, and then, and and that allows me to not have to hustle and not work the long
hours, because burnout is real, especially if you are, you know, juggling your kids or grandkids or
parents or spouses, partners, whatever, right? There’s a, you know, sometimes we got a lot going on
up here. We got a lot of things we’re keeping track of. So
18:03
I want to say, Okay, I’m going to paint this picture for you here a second, right? This mindful effort
does not mean that you’re going to work so much that you can’t do those things. It means you’re
going to work so much that you can pay people to do some of those things. You can pay somebody to
clean your house every week instead of every other week or every month. Or maybe you’re not, maybe you’re doing it all yourself, right? If you’re making enough money, if you’re mindful about the
profit, and you’re mindful about the time you’re putting at your desk, and you’re mindful about how
you’re spending your time, you’re going to be you, it’s going to it’s going to bring more profit to your
business, put more money in your bank account, so you can pay people to do the kinds of things that
is drowning you right now. So if you are having this burnout, because you just got so many things
going on, you know, think about what if, instead of food shopping, you know, you used Instacart, what
if? And, you know, yeah, yeah, it’s $50 out the window. I get that, but that time, my time’s valuable,
right? It my time’s valuable.
19:01
What if you could pay people to do some of the things you’re doing right now so that, so that you can
spend more times with your loved ones and doing the things you love to do? Right? It comes from
working smarter, not harder, okay, working efficiently in fewer hours with higher focus. So
19:18
I know that I’m saying to you. I want you to put more hours in for a short amount of time, because I
want you to get I want you to work that muscle. I want you to work that muscle so that you start to
build your business with the same intention, with the same accountability, with the same productivity
you had when you had somebody that you were accountable to, right? And when you do that, that’s
when you start to be working more efficiently with those fewer hours, but that higher focus, okay, this
is why I want you to call me before you you know I’m going to have this conversation, right? I’m
happy to have this conversation with anybody that’s struggling with where their income levels are for
2024 I’m happy to have this conversation we can find some money for you. We can.
20:00
Find a way to implement some of these strategies so that you can continue to have this life of
freedom that you work so hard to build. Okay? And I will say and again, no judgment. Everybody’s got
to do what they got to do. Right? That being said, I believe in 2024 I’ve seen more people go back to
paycheck jobs that from entrepreneurship than any year. And I’ve been doing this probably since,
like, 2010 so like 15, 1415, years. I think this is the year I’ve seen more people go back to their
paychecks again. Do you have to pay the bills? But is what if there’s an alternative like, let’s explore
the alternative. Because if you put the amount of effort into your business that you put into your job.
If you got up and took a shower and were camera ready every time you sat down in front of your
computer at 6am How could that shift? How you’re showing up for your business, right? How does
that shift that So, alright, so again, I’m, I’m not asking you to do this forever, but I’m going to
challenge you to test this out, maybe even for a week. Let’s, let’s, I’m going to, I would love for you to
do it for the month, but I’m going to ask you to do it for a week, and I want you to report back to me,
right? If you’re not in our Facebook group, LinkedIn for women community, com is our Facebook
group.
21:12
Come test it out and report back and let me know. How did it feel? What did you accomplish? Do you
feel like you see a shift in your business trajectory, right? I want to know. I want to know how this
does. And even just after a week, try it for a month. But start with a week, right? Give me a week and
see how this goes. And feel free, by the way, to DM me on LinkedIn or wherever with a picture of you,
you know, showered and ready at your desk by 6am or 7am or 7am or whatever time it was that used
to leave the house dressed and in your car or getting on the train or whatever to go to work. Okay, so
hope that this makes sense to you. I think that there’s a lot that we can do, and I think we sell
ourselves short sometimes, and we put we give other people more of our attention and our
productivity than we even give ourselves. And I think it’s time for that to end. I want there to be more
wealthy women in the world, and getting a 30% or a 5% raise and your paycheck job isn’t going to
get you there. It’s going to keep the bills paid, and that’s important, but it’s not going to get you to
that wealth that is truly going to be life changing for you, that allows you to live the kind of life that
you want to live with the people you love and for the people you love, right? So
22:25
if you, you know, if you’re not sure where to start with all of this marketing stuff, you know, I’ve got
our LinkedIn quiz. If you go to LinkedIn quiz.com, or Karen yankovich.com/quiz, it’s just a great way to
get started to know, where did, where do you put your effort? Like, if I’m sitting here saying to you,
you know, do the things that are most money making things first. What are those things? Right? Well,
that linkedinquiz.com will help you figure that out. It’s we spend a lot of time on this quiz to help you.
It’s really an assessment, more than a quiz. We spent a lot of time on this assessment so that you can
get a sense of how you want to be showing up. What’s going to make the most sense for you based
on your marketing style and how you can best take advantage of stepping into your next chapter, the
rest of 2024, and 2025, with power and confidence and productivity, so that you don’t have to work
so many hours, so you don’t have to work so hard, and that you are doing all the things you set out to
do in your business. All right, again, I will make another offer to you, happy to talk to you about this
right now. I mean, I can’t promise this forever, but right now, in October of 2024,
23:29
all the calls booked at Karen yankovich.com/call go on my calendar. So I would love to talk to you
about that. Happy to do that. And you know, let’s just see what we can do. And you know, we’ve got
our shoes linked up. Ecosystem of programs has been completely reinvented as we step into q4 of
2024. If we’ve talked before, let’s talk again. I’d love to tell you about it, because marketing has
changed. Things have changed. Your needs have changed, and I have shifted up what I do to
accommodate that and to make sure that we’re still on the cutting edge of what is working, because
what used to work in 2019 2020, 2021, that’s not working anymore. It’s not working for me. It’s not
working for a lot of other people. So if you’re still trying to do all that, gets grab a spot on my calendar
and we’ll talk, if it’s a fit to talk, you know, if I think that we can help you, I’ll let you know what that
looks like, and then we can have a conversation about what it looks like to get some help. Honestly.
I’ll be honest if I think that there’s things you need to do first, I’ll let you know what those are. If I had
some resources to share with you, I’ll share those resources. And then we’ll talk again in another
couple months and see if the time is right, then right. No pressure, really, just
24:38
genuine. I really want you to be making more money, right? That’s where I come from, so that’s the
goal. That’s that’s my goal for you. So thank you so much for hanging with me today. If you loved
what you heard today, and you think that you have an audience of people that might enjoy it, I would
love for you to share this out on your social media. Just take a quick screenshot. Tag me. I’m at Karen
yankovich, and that way I can see.
25:00
I can share it with my audience, because I want to get you visibility. If you’re getting me visibility,
that’s how we support each other, lifting each other up that rising tide that lifts all boats, right? And
25:09
I would love that. And if you really feel in it, a rerating and a review is always helpful to us. It helps, it
helps us, get us get an understanding of what’s resonating with you. And I’ll be back here next week
with another episode. We have a great episode and a great guest for you next week. I’ll see you then.